Social Media Advertising FAQ

10 Top Questions about Advertising on Social Media

It may be surprising to learn that advertising on Facebook has been around for nearly 15 years. Since their advertising platform launch in 2004, Facebook has made a ridiculous amount of changes that has supplied businesses and advertisers with a variety of options to target their ideal consumer online. But what does this mean for your business?

As social media marketing continues to evolve, business owners are wondering if social media advertising is a reasonable and profitable marketing option. We’ve got all the social media advertising questions and answers you want to know!

1. Can social media advertising help my business?

Absolutely! Not only is social media advertising a great way to increase brand awareness, website traffic, and conversions, but with the right strategic approach it can a powerful tool to help your business take over the online marketing sphere and get you to the next level.

2. Why is social media advertising important?

Social media advertising may not be important or necessary to every business, but if you’re an eCommerce business it is vital. Social media advertising allows businesses to saturate the digital world when they combine social media with other digital marketing efforts. Advertising on social media works extremely well in combination with SEO & Pay Per Click advertising allowing you to capture users who are on Google and social media platforms. With over 2.8 billion active people on social media each month, your business could be missing a massive online market.

3. Should I be advertising my business on social media?

Probably. Facebook and other social platforms have changed the game with their newsfeed algorithms, so in many cases you need to “pay to play” in order to make your organic content visible. On average businesses receive 2%-6% organic reach for posts published on business pages. If you’re not visible on Google or social media, wouldn’t you think it’s time for a change to your digital marketing efforts?

Social media advertising isn’t just ideal for eCommerce businesses, but local or service based business can utilize advertising to obtain leads, phone calls, or form submissions. Advertising on social media provides endless options to accomplish your goals as a business.

4. How do I determine my target audience?

Understanding your target market is first and foremost when it comes to social advertising. If you don’t understand the audience who would shell out money for your product or service, how can you successfully market to them?

Ask yourself, what are the core demographics of my audience? Are they in a particular age range, location, income bracket, gender specification, or occupation level?

What is my target audience interested in? A primary difference between social media advertising and Google pay per click advertising is that social media targets specific interests and behaviors of an audience rather than their search habits and queries on Google. By understanding what your audience is interested in, you can further narrow in your target market to get the best ad engagement and conversions.

Does my core audience have any behavior habits? Are they online shoppers? Are they homeowners? Travelers? These behavioral habits are important to identify in your target audience.
Once you determine your core target audience, you can start building out your audiences to advertise to.

5. What are the key components I need to create an ad?

When it comes to creating an ad on social media it is important to have these five things:

Realistic goals – What do you want to accomplish with your advertising campaign?

A clear understanding of core audience – Who is your target market?

Budget – Do you have the budget available for advertising?

High-resolution images and/or video – Do you have a good media library to utilize?

Messaging that reflects your audience – How can you get them to convert?

These five key components can help you be successful with your advertising campaigns.

6. How much budget should I designate to social media advertising?

By understanding your social media goals for an advertising campaign, you can choose what objective would best meet your goals. Are you looking to increase your business page following? Do you want to send people to your website? Do you want to increase conversions or leads? Whichever objective fits your end goal you’ll want to allocate enough funds toward that ad for it to be successful for you.

Facebook ads can run for as little as $5/day and boosted posts for $1/day, so ask yourself, how many people do I want to reach? The reach of your ads is dependent on the target market you choose. Ad platforms can choose your budget and will then provide an estimated range of your audience size so you know if your target is too small, too broad, or just right.

Is your competition advertising on social media? If you’ve seen your competitors push ads to you on your social platforms, you now know that you should be there too. If your competitor dominated the first page in Google with your keywords, wouldn’t you want to perform strong SEO or pay Google to put you in front of them? Same goes for social media.

When you set a budget, it’s necessary to remember that you are selecting the maximum amount of money you wish to spend by detailing a lifetime or daily budget. Budgets for businesses on social media typically fall around 15% of their total online spend.

7. Where can I advertise on social media?

Almost anywhere! Not only do most core social media platforms provide advertising, but many other social platforms offer this option.

8. How do I track ROI?

Tracking ROI for your social media efforts is a common struggle amongst advertisers. In Social Media Examiner’s2016 Industry Report, only 8% of marketers could say they strongly agree that they are able to track ROI for their social media activities.

So, what are some steps you can take to track ROI from your social media efforts?

Install Google Analytics

If you’re eCommerce, activate eCommerce tracking for your site

If you’re a service or local business, add goal tracking to form submissions or phone call clicks

Utilize standard events tracking to track if someone makes a purchase, fills out a form, reads your content, or adds something to their cart

Use UTM strings to track traffic coming to your site from a social media campaign

Analyze the data and make adjustments where there are shortcomings

An important factor when considering the ROI social media marketing brings is that a typical path to conversion doesn’t usually just include social media. More often than not a user is going to see your ad on social media, maybe click through and browse, then they’ll come back on a direct or organic visit and potentially convert at that time. This is what we call an assisted conversion. Due to the complexity of how users find you online, marketer’s struggle with tracking ROI from social media.

9. How can I get started?

Facebook now has up to 5 million advertisers with 75% of them being located in the U.S. So, how can you compete with 5 million people and still see success with your ads? Each advertising campaign is different. First, choose what platforms you feel your audience is on the most. Are you B2B? B2C? Use this guide to help you choose the right advertising platform: